Spring, After Long Winter's Growth
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Draco wants to live a real life after the war, and at Hogwarts, he finds two ways of doing that. But when they begin to pull on him, Draco has to make a choice. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Spring, After Long Winter's Growth

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, mentions of canon pairings

**Rating: **PG-13

**Warnings: **Angst, present tense, Hogwarts "eighth year"

**Wordcount: **9400

**Summary: **Draco wants to live a real life after the war, and at Hogwarts, he finds two ways of doing it. When those ways begin to pull on him, however, he will have to make a choice.

**Author's Notes: **Not sure where this came from. The angst is mild, though, and the ending happy.

**Spring, After Long Winter's Growth**

Draco wants to be ordinary.

He hasn't ever wanted that before, and it's something that worries him the first time he has the thought, walking back up the Azkaban corridor after a visit to his father. Shouldn't he want what is normal for _Malfoys? _The money back that the Ministry took from them, either directly or in legal fees? The restrictions on him and his mother—no Apparition, regular visits form the Aurors, no possession of artifacts of any kind for two years—lifted? Their status in society restored? That's what was normal for him, what he was raised to expect, and the absence should be _infuriating _him, the way his father's imprisonment does.

But as Draco waits, shivering, for the ferry that will take him from the shore of Azkaban back to the shore of England, the thought shifts around inside him like a little burrowing animal, a mouse or a mole or—fine, say it—a _ferret. _Then it digs in.

This is about what he wants, not his father or his mother or the Ministry. This is the only time in Draco's life that he's ever had the chance to breathe out and ask himself what he wanted without a voice immediately speaking up in reply.

And what he wants is to be ordinary. To go back to Hogwarts, to take his NEWTs, the way that seventeen-year-old wizards are supposed to do. Then he'll come back out and find a career he's interested in. He might brew potions in the Manor and sell them by owl order, or to apothecaries. That doesn't take any artifacts, any unusual magic, even any Apparition if he doesn't want to. It would be a peaceful life.

A chance to breathe.

Draco stands there with the leaping spray stinging him, and wonders if he wanted that all along, but never had the opportunity to find out before now. Then he shrugs.

Well. Now that his father isn't breathing down his neck and his mother is past the initial stages of grief for his father and showing that she'll survive, Draco had an even better chance: to find out what's _real. _If the Aurors think he's mental for boarding the ferry with a slight smile, that doesn't matter. They'll survive.

And so will Draco.

* * *

In his first week back at Hogwarts, Draco ends up in front of the Room of Hidden Things, pacing feverishly back and forth, thinking, _I need something to show me that it's worth it. That it goes on._

Coming back to Hogwarts with ideals about the real and the ordinary was all well and good, but he didn't count on how hard it would be. People staring at him and sneering at him—in his own House, too. Everyone seems to have forgotten that he wasn't the only Marked Death Eater in the school last year, and for doing lots worse things than Draco ever did, Snape is now hailed as a hero. People who cowered and snitched to the Death Eaters last year now parade around with their heads up, and Draco, because of his recognizable name and face, receives far worse than they do.

Hexes that cut his textbooks apart. Teachers staring at him stonily in the classroom and refusing to admit that he performed the spell correctly. When Draco came back to the dorm this afternoon and found all his Potions vials smashed, with everyone sniggering and no one admitting, he fled to the Room of Hidden Things.

He heard someone discussing last year how the Room could actually change its nature depending on what you needed to find. Draco never got a chance to use it last year, because he never got the time alone. But this time, he has as much as he wants of it, given the way people move away from him in the library and part around him in the corridors as though he's walking in the middle of a polecat's stink.

_Give me somewhere that can remind me to breathe._

And then the door appears, a plain wooden door banded with iron, a simple thing. Draco runs forwards and opens it.

The room inside is plain, bare stone at first, with a single stool in the middle, and blank windows on the walls. Draco stares around, appalled. Is this what the room thinks he needs? Is this is the sum of his desires?

And then the windows stir.

Draco sits down on the stool, which he realizes is positioned well to take in most of the windows. It even has little wheels on the bottom, like some Muggle chairs Draco has read about, to swivel and look at the ones that are mostly behind him.

As he watches, the flicker of motion in them repeats, trembles and flashes. He leans forwards. Is the room going to give him a view into Azkaban? A vision of the future? Either might work, as a reminder that Draco won't always be stuck here and that some people have it worse than he does.

But then the flicker repeats specifically, and Draco gasps aloud as he catches a glimpse of green. Emerging from the black, it looks like stems reaching up from soil.

And that's what it is. That's what it _does. _All over the room, from soil and white-capped mountains flashing suddenly into light and forests that stand black and decayed and leaf mold and moss, green begins to reach upwards.

Draco stares at the unfolding of tendrils, then buds, then roses, in one picture. There's a burst of greenery, and the roses are suddenly there where they weren't there, red clouds unfolding to welcome in the sun. Around their roots bustle and march tiny black butterflies with crimson spots on their wings, the most beautiful Draco has ever seen.

In another window, a perfectly shaped oak releases a shower and patter of golden-brown leaves left over from last year. It stands alone on the edge of a larger forest, but the window focuses mostly on it. Its branches untwist and reach, and there's a sudden, ringing tone, like a single huge heartbeat. Draco knows what it is without being told, knowledge from one of Professor Snape's lectures returning to him. It's the tree's sap, surging up, rising up, resisting gravity to return spring to the tree. And the tree is laced all over with green now, leaves coming, slower than in the vision of the rose garden, but just as resistant and just as alive.

_Resistant. _Draco wonders why the word occurred to him, and then almost laughs. Of course he knows, and he doesn't need to do anything about it if he doesn't want to.

He turns around to face a window that's almost behind him, and sees tiny purple flowers thrusting their way out of the snow on a glittering peak that looks almost crystalline, surrounded by blue sky too high for clouds. He can't identify what kind they are. He doesn't think it matters. What _matters _is that he can almost smell them, almost feel the force that pushes them out, the life that's there and which keeps forcing its way up even when something tries to hold them down.

Like the snow. Like the cold.

Draco watches the pictures for hours, and when he leaves, he's calmer, more relaxed. He's been avoiding doing certain things about his attackers because he was convinced they would throw him out of Hogwarts if he did, but the Ministry hasn't actually placed those restrictions on him, and they aren't against the rules. And if they threw him out of the school, he no longer thinks he would have to stop growing.

That night, a yelp wakes Draco, and he lights his wand to see a sixth-year Slytherin boy crouched on the carpet, nursing his bloody hand, shocked by the ward that unfolded to bite him when he reached for Draco's trunk.

Draco smiles at him, and the boy backs away, eyes on Draco's face, then turns and pounds his way out of the room.

Draco lies down, and goes back to sleep.

No one disturbs him for the rest of the night.

* * *

"Mind if I sit here?"

Draco looks up, and then stares. Harry Potter is standing over him, a sandwich in one hand and a bag in the other that looks as if it holds apples, from the shape and color against the cloth.

The very fact that Potter isn't standing there with his wand gripped and ready deprives Draco of speech for a second. Potter seems to take that as an invitation, and sits down, folding his legs gracefully beneath him.

Draco looks around. They're on the Quidditch stands, which are completely deserted today. Not even the Gryffindor team wants to practice with the rain pouring all around them, and the sky almost black. An Impervious Charm keeps Draco comfortable, and more charms protect his books and the Transfiguration essay he's trying to write, but he hadn't thought anyone would join him for lunch on a Saturday.

It's still surprise possessing him when he opens his mouth and asks, "What are you doing _here_?"

"Oh, I'm sick of people asking me for autographs and Ron and Hermione treating me like I'm going to break," Potter says, off-hand, and lays the bag with the apples down next to him while he bites into his sandwich and pulls a flask of water from his pocket. He's certainly coordinated, Draco will give him that. "You don't treat me that way because you don't give a shit about me. Want one?" Potter adds, and nudges the bag of apples with his foot.

Draco picks it up and wonders if Potter will mind if he tests it for poisons. Then he realizes that Potter, safe in his trusting little Gryffindor world, is unlikely to recognize the charms, and performs them.

Potter grins in a way that makes Draco wonder. Draco asks, like an idiot, "Why are they treating you like you're going to break?" and shoves the apple in his mouth to keep himself from asking any more questions.

Potter shrugs. "Ginny and I broke up. She took it hard for a few days. I saw it coming. They keep thinking that I'm repressing my emotions and I'm going to burst out sobbing or something." He takes another bite of his sandwich, which is thick enough to make Draco think he'll need to unhinge his jaw like a snake to get around it, but Potter manages just fine. Even if he _does _speak through the bread and cheese and ham like a moron without manners. "I'm not, but Hermione thinks I am, and everything she thinks, Ron thinks. Since the war, anyway."

Draco rolls his eyes. And now Potter, who was just praising Draco's indifference, thinks that Draco cares not only about his love life but the love life of his friends. "Why did you and Weasley break up?" he asks, though, because he doubts Potter would be this candid with anyone else in Slytherin, and it could make great gossip material. "Everyone thought you were the perfect destined couple. Hero, hero-worshiper, it works."

Potter gives him that sharp, knowing grin again, like he did when Draco checked the apple. "A little too perfect, and a little too destined," he replies, and gums his mouth up with the sandwich again, so it's a miracle Draco can understand him. "She was talking about marriage and kids. So was her mum. Hell, so were Ron and Hermione, even though I think _they're _going to wait. I don't want to get out of Hogwarts and get married and immediately start a family. I want to do some other things first. Travel. Learn to actually do enough spells on my own to get accepted as an Auror on my own merits. Experiment with some of these spells that I never had the chance to do myself. Become an Animagus."

"I thought you _wanted _a family," Draco says, before he can stop himself. It's a stupid, soft thing to say, and not one he realized he thought. Who cares about what Potter _wants, _when the main thing, the important thing, is to stop him?

Except that need doesn't exist anymore. Sometimes Draco still wakes up and feels made of light and glass, because it doesn't.

Potter shrugs. "I have a family. My friends, and the Weasleys. Maybe I'll want kids someday. But what the war taught me is that I want to be _real, _you know? That I don't want to die, even though I was willing to do it if I had to. That I don't want to immediately start tying myself up in other lives that would depend too much on me, the way kids would. I want my own life first." He pauses and eyes Draco as if he isn't sure that Draco will understand him. "You know?"

Draco shivers. It's the first time since the war that someone else has spoken his own dream back to him.

And of all the people he would have thought would share it, Potter is not one of them.

"Yeah, I can see you do," Potter finishes, quietly, and returns to his lunch.

They don't speak again, although it takes about ten more minutes for Potter to gum his way through the apples and, it turns out, the bananas he brought with him. Draco refuses a banana when Potter offers it to him, because there are limits. Potter shrugs and jogs away with only a nod and a, "Thanks."

Draco sits there under his Impervious Charm for a long time afterwards, looking into the distance and watching the rain splash on the Quidditch pitch.

* * *

The room has a climbing vine in the biggest window today, a snaky green one resplendent with purple-red flowers.

Draco leans his chair close to the window and tries his best to blank his mind and relax it at the same time, opening it to what comes next in the next few moments, to what's happening _right now_. How many ways can he find to describe the colors of those flowers?

There's purple, he thinks. There's red. They aren't as red as the roses, but that's only to be expected. They're almost the color of the impatiens that his mother has in her private garden, but not quite. Draco cocks his head, and the color of the flowers moves with him, swelling, the ripples in it, as though this isn't a window but a painting, growing more prominent.

Draco has to stop when that thought hits him. What if this _isn't _a window, showing him something real? What if it's only a painting, and all the flowers and trees growing and stretching around him aren't real?

He shivers, and the window seems to pause. The flowers inside it lean towards Draco. He can see tints of blue in them now, near the very edges of the leaves. They rustle and dance, and Draco swallows and stretches out a hand.

There's still a screen of canvas separating him and the flowers, but he thinks he can feel them nuzzling up against him anyway. The silky sensation of petals flicks along his fingertips, there and then gone, and he can smell the distant air of the flowerbed where they grow, so brilliant and rich with the scent of growing things that Draco's mouth waters.

Then it's gone, and the flowers have gone back to stretching, and Draco thinks that he _could _have imagined it, that everything might be nothing more than the painting that it looked like.

But he doesn't need to think that way, not if he doesn't want to. That's the lesson, he thinks, leaning back in his chair. The room gives him a chair now, and not a stool, because he required it.

He can't always keep other people from hurting him. He couldn't prevent his father from going to prison, or the Dark Lord from threatening his family, or other people from hating him once the war was over.

But what he _can _control is his own actions. If he feels hurt and upset and yet keeps from casting Dark curses on people, then that's good. It means he's really the one who wins, because they'll look like fools if they keep running around muttering that he's casting them and there's no evidence.

And sometimes people can change, and they will believe in him.

Like Potter.

* * *

"Do you just like having distance from your friends sometimes, or what?"

Draco has promised himself he wouldn't ask that question, but after yet another afternoon of Potter sitting with him at lunch, on the Quidditch stands and in random corners of the castle, Draco is convinced that Potter seeks him out deliberately. And that means he has to ask. He can't just bask in the nearness of a potential political ally, as his mother urged him to when Draco wrote to her about it, because he doesn't know what Potter's motive is, and if he _would _be a political ally or not.

Potter pauses in getting out a sandwich from the little bundle he always seems to carry around with him. "You don't want me here?"

Draco rolls his eyes. He can't help himself. "Yes, I want company of all kinds, Potter, which means that I seek it out. You can't see them, but I'm quite popular with all my imaginary friends."

Potter smiles instead of retreating, which is a hopeful sign. Today they're down a corridor in the dungeons that used to hold classrooms, but got abandoned when there was a potions explosion down here. The stench of the lingering fumes and the odd noises in corners aren't _too _bad, and Draco can't afford to be choosy. Draco dragged out one of the old benches and tables to eat and study at, and Potter joined him when he arrived.

"Well," Potter says. "You can talk to me like I'm a normal person, and if you're unpopular, it also means that I have some privacy when I'm with you." He tugs at his hair, a gesture that Draco can't remember from last year. Of course, he also didn't see much of Potter last year. "So there you have it. I'm using you for your unpopularity."

Draco smiles, remembers it's Potter, stops smiling, and then decides that it's funny, and who cares who said it?

Potter is chuckling quietly at him, though. "I confuse you, don't I?" he asks, taking out a piece of bread spread with honey and one of the ever-present apples. He slices the apple neatly with his wand and starts laying out the little pieces on the bread. Another slice of bread follows, slapping more honey on top, when he's satisfied with the first one. "You can't figure out what I'm doing here or what I want with you."

Draco nods. At least Potter brought it up himself so he didn't have to. "You said something about wanting to live and not get married right away, a few weeks ago," he says. "I just can't figure out how I help with that."

Potter holds his wand towards him, shaking his head a little. "I hate to break this to you, Draco, but you couldn't help me with kids even if I _did _want to have them." He bites into his apple and gives Draco a smirk.

It looks _good _on him, Draco thinks, a little horrified, and shakes his head hard. "I mean—coming and sitting and eating with me isn't normal, either."

"It's surely more normal than battling Death Eaters, or being someone's torturer, or hunting down a madman."

Draco freezes. It's the first time either of them's spoken about the war in specific detail, as more than the cause of their desire to lead normal lives. He cautiously lifts his eyes to Potter's face, and waits for some sign that he's joking, or that he blames Draco for the things he had to endure.

But although Potter is looking into the distance with some bitterness, he turns back to Draco with a sour little grin. "I want some quiet right _now_," says Potter. "To accomplish most of what I want, I do need good NEWTs. And I decided that I need at least one quiet year. That includes not planning a wedding, and not dating anyone, and not getting involved in the plans for Ron and Hermione's wedding, either." He takes another crunchy bite of his sandwich and sighs, honey dripping down his chin. "I love my friends, but I don't need another adventure right now."

"Studying with me isn't what you used to do," Draco points out.

Potter looks up at him, and his eyes are so intense that it's hard not to stare. Draco compromises by looking down at his Potions homework, and toying with the paper when it isn't distracting enough.

"I don't _want _what I used to do," Potter says plainly. "I thought I told you that. Not the life I led then, not the life my friends want me to lead. My own. But studying with you is something new and something that also doesn't require me to charge out and be a hero. It's perfect."

"Someone might want you to be a hero if they hear that you were studying with me," Draco mutters.

Potter waves his hand. "My friends might want me to do some things I don't want to do, but they're not as prejudiced against Slytherins as they were. They might want me to explain. I'd explain. Then we'd go back to normal."

"But they don't know that you come and talk with me?" Draco asks, surprised. He thought everything one war hero did, the others either did or knew.

"No. They just think that I'm avoiding the Gryffindor table because I don't want more drama with Ginny." Potter gives him a little smile. "I also want to have some secrets, the kind that are silly and don't matter. I didn't ever get to have those." He looks a little wistful, and bites harder into his sandwich.

Draco watches him in silence. It really is strange, the way that declaration of Potter's makes him feel. Silly and warm and about to laugh inside, as if he likes—

As if he _likes _being Potter's secret.

That makes more warmth and more confusion well up inside him, and he just sits there when Potter leans across the table and offers him an apple. But Potter doesn't get as offended as easily as he did last year, and in the end, Draco takes it and nods to him.

Potter nods back, and then they really study for the rest of lunch, until they have to go back to class. It's one of the most comfortable times that Draco's had all year.

* * *

The next time Draco goes back to the room, all the windows are shimmering with light. Draco takes a seat on the comfortable chair that the room has provided for him this time in lieu of the stool, and watches.

The light seems to turn flat towards him, shimmering like a blank disk, and Draco catches his breath as he realizes that he can see _through _it. Then the transparency becomes a series of sunbeams and shines down on all those gardens, green and red and white with the flourishing of their flowers.

Draco gets up and turns around so that he can see the windows behind him better. There's the one with the oak tree, striving towards the sun, so bright brown and green that Draco thinks he could reach through and touch it. There's a seashore he hasn't seen before, and the shells and the running birds on the edge of the water make it look as though it has blooms even though it doesn't, really.

Draco watches, turning from mountain to shore and from tree to bushes, from lone flowerbed to full-blown garden and buds that become leaves to buds that become blossoms. He can watch them forever, he thinks. They comfort him, the reminder that life goes on.

The same thing he thought the last time he came here, wasn't it?

Draco frowns and tugs at his hair. He can't remember, exactly, but for some reason, he thinks it's dangerous to have the same thought twice. Like the room might take away his capacity to come here if he repeats himself too much.

But he loses the fear as he loses himself in the wash of life. For right now, the gardens are growing, and that's all he needs.

* * *

"Why are you with _Malfoy, _Harry?"

Draco hesitates, glad that he hasn't come out around the corner yet. Last time they met, Potter invited _Draco _to come and join him in the entrance hall after lunch on Saturday; he said they'd walk outside and fly against each other on their brooms, the way Draco thought they would never do again. Neither of them are on the Quidditch teams this year.

He should have known it was too good to be true, that one of Potter's friends would finally notice he was disappearing somewhere and confront him about it. And of course Potter, incurably honest that he is, has to _tell _them about it.

Draco looks over his shoulder. The darkness of the dungeon stairs looks appealing, at least as appealing as the light that streams through the windows in the Room of Hidden Things. He wonders if he should retreat into it.

"Because I want to be," Potter says, short and sharp. "And I promised him we would be together today. Get out of the way, Ron." A pause, and he adds, "Please."

Draco didn't expect this, and the astonishment makes him look around the corner again. Weasley is standing with his back to him, but Draco can make out enough of the side of his face to know that he's gaping at Potter. Potter stands there with his eyes gone so cool and his arms folded so tightly that Draco would think him about to punch Weasley if he wasn't familiar with the way Potter's temper got at times.

But now…

Why would Potter get _that _upset at his friend about _Draco_?

Draco has to wonder if maybe their meetings are important to Potter for some reason, too, and not just to Draco.

"Fine," Weasley suddenly snaps, and takes a step back. "But you know that you'll get over Ginny eventually, Harry. And then we'll expect you back." He flounces away as if he was his sister. In fact, Draco can't remember a time that he ever saw Ginny Weasley get that upset.

Potter sighs and runs his hand through his hair, tugging hard enough that some dark strands stand up and get tangled around each other. Then he turns, sees Draco looking at him, and smiles. "So you heard, huh?" he asks.

"Hard to be in the same castle and not hear," Draco says softly, walking towards Potter. Potter only stands looking at him and doesn't seem inclined to make a big deal of it, so Draco doesn't think he needs to, either. But he has something to ask. "So you don't want to be with your friends, then?"

Potter waves his hand and falls into step beside Draco as they make their way to the doors. "I've eaten lunch with them the past few days, and played every game I can think of with Ron, and studied with Hermione, and talked with both of them about what we're going to do after Hogwarts. They can't accuse me of neglecting them." He turns his head and smiles curiously in Draco's direction. "What about _you, _though? Do you have other friends?"

Draco bites the side of his mouth hard enough that Potter stops and reaches out a hand. "I didn't mean…"

"The others don't look at me, or talk to me," Draco says briefly. "Most of them were either neutral or are under heavier restrictions than I am. There aren't a lot of _Marked Death Eaters _that got to come back, I'm sure you've noticed."

"And the only other one who's here is dead," Potter says, his eyes far off.

Draco stares at Potter, wondering what he can be talking about. "Huh?" he finally asks, because there's no sign that Potter is going to clear up his confusion.

"The portrait that they finally agreed to put up to Professor Snape." Potter smiles at him. "They wouldn't put it in the Headmaster's office, which I suppose I can understand. So they stuck it down a dungeon corridor. But I go and visit him sometimes."

Draco stops dead. He can't believe he didn't _know _about this. "But he wouldn't be happy to see _you_."

Potter cocks his head like a curious bird. "No. I imagine that he would be happier to see you, probably. But it gives him a chance to yell at me, and that was one of his biggest pleasures when he was alive. I won't deny it to him now."

Draco is shaking, a little. He didn't know. He didn't _know_, and although he knows that Professor Snape wouldn't blame him for that, he can't believe how much time he's lost, either. "I…"

Potter touches his shoulder, one light, gentle glance from his hand, as though he's afraid Draco's bones have suddenly turned to glass. "I'll tell you what. Why don't we postpone our game to another day and you go visit him?"

Draco stares at Potter. "But what are your friends going to say when you go back up to Gryffindor Tower?"

Potter shrugs at him. "Who says I'm going there? I'll give Ron a little time to cool down, and that means not going straight back. Maybe I'll go to the library and study for that Transfiguration essay that Hermione thinks I should have written already." He laughs, probably at the expression Draco can feel forming on his face. "Maybe not. But don't worry about me. Worry about yourself and Professor Snape for once."

Draco wants to say something, but he's not sure what he could say. It's not as if Potter was really _concealing _the existence of the portrait from him, but he didn't tell Draco about it, either. And he doesn't know what he would be thanking Potter for.

In the end, he salutes Potter and trots away, already composing opening sentences in his head. But when he gets to the portrait, of Professor Snape sitting behind a desk laden with books and reading, he just says, "Hello, Professor."

Professor Snape looks up, and for a second, his eyes slip shut, and Draco wonders if he's really happy to see him at all.

In the end, though, Professor Snape gets up and comes over to the frame, saying softly, "Hello, Draco. What has your year been like?"

Draco takes a deep breath, and begins to talk.

* * *

This time, when Draco steps into the room, the windows are bright with a richer light than usual, thick and red. Draco stands there curiously, turning his head back and forth. He wonders if sunset is coming on.

And what that will mean for the flowers he watches, if so. But the last time he came, all the windows were dark at first, so maybe they go through their seasons just like he does, and it won't be so bad.

He settles on the chair that the room conjures for him, and faces the garden ahead of him, the one that held the roses the first time he visited. Yes, the roses are dancing in the sunset, he can see now. They're bright red and clear pink, with here and there a white one, and they droop, their petals folded inwards, as if they're going to sleep.

Draco turns to look at the oak tree. It doesn't close its leaves the way that the flowers have their petals, but it does look as though it's contemplating something heavy, with the sun not turning it into brilliant colors anymore, and its shadow stretches across the ground, thick as a spill of ink.

Some of the other windows show a less elaborate sunset, and less effect on the plants. But Draco doesn't think that much about it. He's more caught up in what he's wondering than what he's seeing.

He came here the first time, and the times after that, and the windows gave him a sense of hope because of all the life bursting and flourishing in them. But what happens if the sunset comes and they pass? If they die, the way that the plants in the Forbidden Forest will soon, because winter is coming?

What will that mean for the sense of hope they gave Draco?

That question remains in the back of his head, troubling him, and he walks slowly down to Slytherin again. He nearly doesn't escape the tripwire ward that someone's left at the foot of his bed, or notice the ill-luck runes painted on his bed-curtains. Of course, once he does, it's a simple thing to get rid of them. Runes usually are, which is why they work best when they're in a place that no one will notice or disturb them for a while.

Maybe Draco is deluding himself, and he'll finish this year with good NEWTs but still find that no one wants to deal with him. His best friend right now is a portrait, and who knows what Potter's game is?

It takes Draco forever to fall asleep that night, although it was quick all the other nights after his first sight of the room. He lies with his arms stretched up on either side of him and his heart pounding quickly, nearly frightened.

* * *

"Ready for that game we talked about, Malfoy?"

Draco starts and sits up. He hasn't met with Potter for the past several days, although he's seen him sitting at the Gryffindor table and walking with his friends between classes. Draco gave up two days ago on trying to figure out whether that means that Potter just needs that long to soothe his friends' tempers and worries about where he was, or if it means that Potter will never come back again.

"What game?" Draco asks. He can't remember promising to play wizards' chess or Exploding Snap with Potter. Besides, he has Weasley for those, doesn't he? Draco swallows something sour in the back of his throat.

Potter pauses and stares at him. Draco looks back, and forces himself to look critically. Potter's hair is as messy as ever, and he wears clothes that are _still _too big and threadbare for him. You'd think the Savior of the Wizarding World could take care of himself properly, but Potter hasn't changed since the war, not in anything that counts.

Which means that Draco is his secret and his refuge from being himself, but nothing more. How can Draco expect unselfish treatment from a Gryffindor?

"The Quidditch match that we were going to have," Potter says. He pushes his glasses back up his nose and sits down at the library table next to Draco, even though Draco didn't invite him. Draco tucks his arms around his books, boiling with resentment, although he's not sure why. "The one Ron interrupted the other day. I'm sorry about that, by the way. Ron still thinks that I'm going to get back together with Ginny or something, and he thinks that you're interrupting that." Potter shakes his head, clearly amused that someone would think Draco could get in the way of his bond with Ginny Weasley.

Draco shrugs. "I thought you were going flying with Weasley." He turns back to the Herbology book in front of him, which isn't fascinating, but is better than half the inane things Potter would come up with to talk about. Potter doesn't really want much to do with Draco. Look at the way he pawned him off on Professor Snape's portrait.

"Malfoy? What's wrong?" Potter leans across the table, touches his arm.

Draco recoils, and the worry and trouble that he can't even really admit to himself—not without thinking more than he wants to about the windows of plants in the Room and how important they've become to him—spills out. "What's _wrong_? That you still always choose your friends over me, and you never told me that Professor Snape was _here _even though it's October, and that you go prancing around with your friends the same as always while I don't have any? And you think that I should just, what? Be happy for your interference in my life? Be fucking _ecstatic _because you can take some time out of your busy schedule to be sorry for the Slytherin outcast?"

Potter blinks several times. Then he says, "I'm sorry for not telling you that Professor Snape's portrait was here. I should have realized that you would probably like to talk to him."

"But not for anything else?" Draco hugs his Herbology book to his chest and stares at Potter again. "Not for spending time with your friends and treating me as your little charity case?"

"I don't think I'm treating you as a charity case." Potter's voice is inflexible, and he looks Draco straight in the eye in a way that makes Draco want to squirm. He doesn't end up doing it, because he _forbids _himself to do it, but it's a lot harder than it should be. "Maybe you feel like that, and if you do, I'm sorry. But I do just want to be your friend, and if that means a delicate balancing act with my friends, well, so be it. I still want to go on meeting you."

"Maybe I don't fucking feel like being _balanced_," Draco snaps, and, standing up, begins to shovel his books into his satchel.

Potter sits back and stares at him. Draco is aware that it's taking him a long time to shove his books in, and he flushes. He doesn't know if he's doing it deliberately or not. He doesn't know anything at the moment, it feels like. It's _infuriating._

"All right," Potter says, as if talking to himself, or a third person who's there, more reasonable than Draco. "If you need a while to think, that's fine."

Draco spins around. "How can you always be so _understanding_?" he splutters, waving his hands. He knows that Madam Pince is looking at him, but right now, he doesn't give a fuck. Professor Snape is _dead, _and his father is in prison, and he still has the Dark Mark on his left arm, and everything is going wrong. "You're sitting there like I'm—like I had a _reason _for turning on you—"

He falls silent as Potter stands up and leans across the table. It's ridiculous for someone who hasn't grown an inch in at least two years, but Potter can be bloody intimidating when he wants to. Then again, Draco supposes he's had some practice, if all those stories about his confrontations with reporters are true.

"I think you're bloody mental, actually," Potter says, and his voice is cool. "But I also think that whatever happened, you need some time to think about it. And maybe you'll come back, and maybe you won't, but you know what I learned in the war? I have to _deal _with people. I can't always _control _them. I learned that someone I thought was evil wasn't, and someone I always thought was good and great was—more complicated than that. So I'm going to wait and see if you're more complicated than that, too, or if you're just mental."

He spins and stalks out of the library, and leaves Draco staring after him.

Which also means that he leaves Draco to face the wrath of Madam Pince alone, since Draco doesn't move out of the way in time.

* * *

Draco sinks down in the chair in the middle of the room and stares at the windows. _Give me something beautiful, _he begs the room. _Something growing. Something not like me. _Professor Slughorn supervised the detention Draco got for yelling at Madam Pince himself, a kindness, since a lot of the other professors might not treat Draco fairly. But Draco's arms still ache from scrubbing out cauldrons, and his shoulders feel like they're about to turn into mush and melt to the floor.

And everything is still _wrong_.

For a long time, the windows are still, as though the sun has set and the flowers are sleeping again. Draco bits his lip savagely and stands. If the Room isn't going to listen to him, then he'll leave.

But then a bright flare of light comes from the window directly in front of him, the ones that usually shows the roses. Draco catches his breath and turns around, not having realized until now just how badly he needs this.

But the window doesn't show the sun rising, or the roses. Instead, it shows a volcano exploding.

Draco falls in backing away, and catches himself by the hands against the chair. Then he stands back up and scowls, stalking up to the wall. Is the Room trying to tease him? Is it going to show him some rose that only looks like a volcano from a distance? Is the vision from the window going to back up and show him the red-orange petals of the finest rose he's ever seen, a mockery of his fear?

But he sees the explosion more clearly instead, the cone of the volcano collapsing inwards on itself as it throws up the fine ash, the grey stone smoldering and glowing with the falling embers, and the explosion scatters itself over a landscape all around the mountain, grey-green with scrubby trees. Draco stands there and watches it happen, his arms folded and his mouth locked in a frown. He knows it isn't a very intimidating frown—knows that because he feels like he would laugh if he saw himself in a mirror—but it's the best he can manage right now.

He wants to show the Room that he disdains the feeble show it's giving him. The vision of flowers first comforted him and made him feel that he had something to live for. Flowers are what he wants to see now.

But the Room is either being influenced by some unconscious desire on his part that Draco can't name, or else it has its own agenda. It keeps showing the explosion until Draco slams his way out, nearly scarring the wall behind him with the bang of the door.

* * *

"Do you want to go flying?"

Draco leans back and tries not to scratch his eyes as he rubs them. They're so dry and dusty from staying up all night that they _hurt_. "You don't give up, Potter, do you?" he asks, and tilts his head back so that he can meet Potter gaze to gaze. He might be tired, but that doesn't mean Potter gets to say that Draco Malfoy's backed down.

Potter doesn't say it. He falls back and stares at Draco instead. "What?" Draco snaps. Potter's all wide-eyed over nothing, as far as he can see. Draco doesn't have his wand drawn, and when he looks down at his essay, he still has the quill and the inkwell in the proper place, not having knocked them all over his parchment.

"You look bad," Potter whispers. He reaches out, lets his hand hover over Draco's shoulder as though he can't imagine a resting place like that for it, and then lets it fall on him after all. "Did something happen?"

Draco squirms and tosses until Potter's hand flies away the way it should, and then stands up and glares at him. "Nothing _happened, _except that you can't seem to keep your hands off me," he hisses.

"What I mean is, you were acting strange the last time we talked, and now you look like you've lost your best friend," Potter says. He pauses, and Draco can _feel _him mentally reviewing the Slytherins who came back this year. "Did you?"

Draco sighs and begins to pick up his study materials again. Madam Pince is still giving him evil looks, reminding him that his last outburst wasn't tolerated in the library. Draco is sure the next one won't be, either. "Look, Potter, could you give it a rest?" he snaps. "I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in."

"Sure," Potter says in a surprisingly agreeable voice, nodding his head. Draco squints at him, and he holds up his hand as though protesting his innocence, or swearing to it in court. From some of the things Draco's heard about him, he reckons that wouldn't be far from the truth. "I just want to know one thing, and you can tell me quickly, and then you can leave."

"What do you mean?" Draco's too tired of games to do this. He already told Potter that, didn't he? Sometimes it feels like his world is swimming and he's beneath the surface of all this water. He doesn't always know what he's already said, what he's already done.

"I said that you looked like you lost your best friend." Potter leans near enough that Draco can see through his glasses to the eyes behind them, and they're too honest and too kind and too _everything_. "I just want to know whether you did or not."

Draco laughs—once. He knows the minute he hears the laughter that he can't let it continue, and Madam Pince is looking in his direction. "I _told _you, Potter, I don't have any," he hisses over the sound of his closing books. "You're probably the closest I have, or can have. Don't let it go to your head," he adds cuttingly, and turns away.

But Potter follows him, right out of the library and down the corridor. He's not chattering now, but he walks at Draco's shoulder as if he thinks that he has the right to be there. When Draco spins around to confront him, his face is thoughtful.

"Does this have something to do with you acting mental last time?" Potter asks.

Draco rubs his forehead, and drops his books in the middle of the floor. Potter looks down at them, and then back up at his face, like Draco is the most important thing he could be looking at right now.

Draco wants to clutch his head and scream. He would be _happy _if he could do that, as a matter of fact. It might get rid of some of the insanity he can feel brewing at the back of his brain.

He lost the pictures that the Room of Requirement showed him, and now Potter refuses to go away. Draco should have known that the things he had after the war, since he came back to Hogwarts, are too good to be true, he thinks. He should have cut himself off from them the minute he started depending on them. He should have gone on acting and thinking like a true Slytherin, heartless and cunning.

Potter bends down and picks up his books, holding them out to Draco.

Draco stares at them, and at _him_, and another thought forms.

He should have done that. But he didn't, and now it's too late. Isn't it? He can't pretend that the last months of associating with Potter never happened. He can't go into the Room of Requirement and ask for something else that will satisfy him as much as those first glimpses of flowers growing did.

He can't ignore the past. He can only try to move past it.

It's far harder than walking into Hogwarts again, but Draco makes himself meet Potter's eyes and say, "What about that game?"

It takes a moment, the smile that opens across Potter's face, but then, so does the sunrise.

* * *

This time, the windows that hang on the walls of the Room of Requirement when Draco walks into it are all full of fire. Draco doesn't care. He sits down on the comfortable chair that he requires and watches them, waiting.

It takes a long time—longer than it took for Potter's smile to appear. Draco's afraid that he'll be clutching the arms of his chair by the time the flowers show up. But he has to be patient. He has to concentrate on what he wants to see.

He thinks he knows what went wrong, now. He had no particular desire to see a volcano exploding. But he just expected to sit back and be entertained, the way he expected Potter to somehow connect with him and yet leave him alone at the same time. He was passive, and the room just grabbed something and showed it to him. Maybe part of Draco even _wanted _the destruction of the things that sustained him for the past few months, the pictures and Potter's friendship. He's done that before, done things that he knew he shouldn't. His hand goes to his left arm.

It makes it easier, somehow. If he can pretend that everything around him is going wrong, but none of it is his fault, then he's justified in wallowing in self-pity. He doesn't have to make it better. He doesn't have to try.

But he knows he can, now. His mind is full of memories of Potter as he leans forwards and concentrates fiercely on those windows—those picture-windows, he thinks of them now.

The first stirring comes slowly. Out of the middle of the flames, shapes form, the way they would if Draco was sitting by the fire in the Slytherin common room. Only those shapes would melt and dissolve without Draco's conscious control.

This time, staring at them, willing it, Draco brings flowers out of ash.

They open, more orange than roses, whiter than lilies, climbing towards blue at the edges. Draco makes them tremble as if they were blossoms blowing in the breeze, but then he firms them, bites down with the edge of his will, clenches them into beauty and being.

And when he's done and looks around, all the windows are full of glowing wonder. Not the same pictures as he first saw when he came here, but they don't need to be the same, he thinks, to give him joy.

Then he sits there as long as he likes, basking in the warmth of his own effort. And it is wonderful.

* * *

"Harry!"

Draco can feel the way Harry's shoulder tenses against his, but he doesn't move, and Harry only turns his head lazily to the side to look at Weasley. "Hi, Ron," Harry murmurs, as if he and Draco are doing nothing extraordinary by lying together in the shade of a tree, heads pillowed close together, shoulders brushing.

Weasley, to be fair, isn't hostile. He's too shocked to be anything so definite, as Draco sees when he opens his eyes to look. Instead, he stands over them with his mouth flapping open. He holds out one arm as though to point to them, and then it falls to his side, and he shakes his head.

"What—how—why—"

"When you've made up your mind as to what question you want to ask me, you can spit it out, Ron," Harry says, and leans further towards Draco. Their hair brushes together. Draco finds he's holding his breath, and lets it go, slowly. He's thinking that maybe he doesn't actually need to do anything right now, like fight Weasley or justify himself to him. Draco took the first and most important step by going flying with Harry that day. Now Harry can fight the battles.

If there needs to be a battle. When Draco peeks beneath his lowered eyelids again, Weasley isn't in any state for one. He still stands there, and he still looks foolish.

"What are you doing here with Malfoy?" Weasley manages that much, and Draco opens one eye fully to take in the results.

Harry's lazy gesture takes in everything, the tree they're under, the lake they're beside, the fragile warmth of the fading autumn day. "Well, see, it's pleasant and shady here, and we were both tired after the game we played."

"_Game_? Without me?" Weasley looks more put out about that than he is about Harry being here with a Malfoy. Draco grins and closes his eye again.

"Yes," Harry says serenely. "It was a Seeker's game. Just between the two of us."

Draco feels Harry's head turn, and so he turns his own and opens his eyes again. The way Harry is smiling at him makes him feel as though he was back in the Room of Requirement, in front of his flame-flowers. The smile should also be between the two of them, he thinks, reaching a hand up to touch Harry's cheek.

Weasley seems to think so, too. At least, he opens his mouth, says something garbled that might include the word, "later," and breaks and runs towards the castle. Draco laughs without making a sound, and Harry laughs with him.

Softly, not maliciously, while the greenery and the warmth curl around them.

* * *

It is late evening, almost a month later, when Draco takes Harry to the Room of Requirement to see his flowers.

Harry doesn't argue against coming, although he doesn't seem to know where Draco is leading him until they step into the corridor. Then his smile becomes wide and vague. Draco decides he doesn't want to know what's behind it. One of the best things about his—thing—with Harry is that they don't always ask each other questions about the past, any more than they spend all the time trying to define their futures and answer all the questions right now. Both of them believe they will have enough time to do it in.

Draco concentrates, makes the three passes up and down the corridor, and then opens the door. Harry follows him in, eyes alight with wonder as he looks around. Wonder is the most beautiful emotion on him, Draco has discovered.

It's not a discovery that he intends to share with anyone else. Draco wants to be a _little _selfish.

He directs Harry towards the chair the room has conjured for them, and pushes him into it. "Close your eyes," he whispers. "They need to come up slowly."

And when Harry is sitting there, trusting, his eyes closed, Draco pulls them up, conjures them out of himself.

Flowers open in all the frames. Bright orange blossoms, born from the smoke of the volcano he saw, growing fertile out of the ash. Roses, like the ones that his mother tended once in the gardens of the manor and will tend again, Draco wills himself to believe. Violets, so many in such a small space that they look like someone has splashed them down there and will be back to pick them up later. Endless blue flowers, bright as the fire, but cool, spangling mountain slopes and the banks of a lake as blue as they are, cradled in the bowl of a valley. Draco believes he will go there someday.

That _they _will go there someday.

When he tells Harry to open his eyes, he learns there is an emotion even more beautiful than wonder, even more fit for Harry's face: delight.

Harry leans forwards from the chair as though he has to see and admire every detail in order to give the pictures their due. He touches Draco's hand, then clutches it. Draco leans down, and now he's the one standing protectively over Harry, ready to fight if he has to, or teach him about the beauty, or guide him back.

"They're beautiful," Harry says at last. His throat sounds dry, and Draco requires a glass of water for him.

But when Harry looks up, it's more than clear what he wants, and it's not water.

Draco leans down and kisses him, long and slow, in front of fire and roses and spring and summer, in front of the picture of places they might go someday and places that will never exist, and Harry's hands rise and hold him back, cradling wonder there between them.

**The End.**


End file.
